The Canadian Government will eliminate the backlog in the Federal Skilled Worker Program to create a faster and flexible immigration system that promotes Canada’s long term prosperity.

Citizenship and Immigration Canada is planning to refund fees and return the applications who applied before 27th February, 2008 and for whom an immigration officer has not made a decision based on selection criteria by 29th March, 2012. This is expected to affect around 280,000 applicants and their dependents. For those who have passed the selection criteria stage, CIC will continue to process the application until they are applied to enter Canada or dismissed.

Over the years the number of Federal Skilled Worker applications received has exceeded the space available Canada has designated for landing immigrants. This has resulted in long processing times and increased inventory in the processing centers around the world.

In eliminating these files, CIC hopes to decrease the backlog and processing new files quickly and efficiently.